


Glimpses of the past

by Ailendolin



Category: 1917 (Movie 2019)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Gift Giving, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:41:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28114041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ailendolin/pseuds/Ailendolin
Summary: Blakefield Winter Wonderland 2020: Day 16: Gift GivingIn 1919, a few days before Christmas, Will gives Tom a gift.
Relationships: Tom Blake & William Schofield, Tom Blake/William Schofield
Comments: 16
Kudos: 27
Collections: Walking In A Blakefield Wonderland





	Glimpses of the past

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the Blakefield winter prompt event and is dedicated to all the lovely people who participate in the event with me! <3 I'm very excited to finally share this story with you, and I'm sorry I made this wonderful prompt a little bit angsty. 
> 
> **Warnings:** swearing, depiction of violence (related to what happened in canon), grief, sickness, ptsd.
> 
> Disclaimer: I own neither 1917 and make no money with this.

**Glimpses of the past**

“Here. For you.”

Despite his outward calm, Will’s hands were trembling when he held out the package to Tom. It was small and wrapped in simple brown paper – not pretty or fancy and certainly not special but it was done with love and care. Will had done his best to make sure that the paper wasn’t crinkled and that the edges were even and in perfect symmetry even though he knew that, ultimately, none of that mattered. What mattered was what lay inside, and what Tom would think of it. Will had lost count of the number of sleepless nights he’d spent worrying over this, wondering if giving this gift to Tom was the right thing to do and always fearing that it would make matters worse.

Now that he stood in front of Tom, clutching the small package as if his life depended on it, his anxiety only grew. It didn’t help that Tom had gone very still, staring at the gift in Will’s hands in obvious surprise. His eyes briefly flicked back and forth between it and Will’s face, hesitant and unsure, and Will was beginning to regret his decision and wish the ground would just swallow him up when Tom finally bridged the distance between them and reached for the gift.

“Christmas is still over a week away,” he said softly as his fingers carefully took the package from Will’s trembling hands. He glanced uncertainly at Will, an unspoken question in his eyes.

Will bit his lip nervously.

“It’s not a Christmas gift,” he mumbled.

Tom looked back down at the gift. There was a crease between his eyebrows as he turned it around in his hands and tested its weight in an attempt to figure out what it was without opening it. Will watched him silently, and with every second that passed that horrible feeling in the pit of his stomach he’d tried to ignore all day grew worse and worse until he was certain he’d just made the biggest mistake of his life. What had he been thinking? Why did he decide today of all days was a good day to do this? He should have kept the damn thing hidden in the back of his drawer where it had been for the past year, ignored and gathering dust, though never forgotten. He should have listened to his gut feeling and left well enough alone.

But he hadn’t, and now it was too late to go back and change his mind. There was no way he could take back the gift now, not when Tom’s fingers were already starting to pry the wrapping paper open. Will stared at them, unable to tear his gaze away. His whole body was so tense he felt like he might snap any second now. Just one more pull and one side of the gift would be exposed and Tom would _know_.

He sucked in a shaky breath, unable to stop himself, and Tom’s fingers stilled abruptly. He looked up at Will, and Will had no idea what to do with the concern he found himself facing.

“Hey, you’re shaking,” Tom said quietly.

Will hadn’t noticed. Self-consciously, he wrapped his arms around his chest, feeling small and uncomfortable as he stood there in the middle of Tom’s childhood bedroom. Tom let out a soft sigh and Will let his head hang, somehow feeling like he had just let Tom down. To his surprise, Tom reached out to rub his arm, and Will felt warmth spread through his entire body from that single point of contact.

“Relax,” Tom murmured, moving his hand up until it came to rest on Will’s shoulder. “It’s just me.”

Will nodded even though Tom had never been ‘just’ anything to him, and that was part of the problem. Of all the people in the world, Tom’s opinion was the one that mattered most, and Will couldn’t bear the thought of Tom thinking differently of him after this.

“If you need to take whatever this is back, it’s okay,” Tom said with an understanding smile. “I won’t be mad or disappointed. I promise.”

Not for the first time Will asked himself what he had ever done to deserve someone like Thomas Blake and his kindness in his life. He would be lying if he said part of him wasn’t tempted by Tom’s offer. It would be so easy to hide away the gift once more and face the repercussions another day.

But, Will slowly realized, he didn’t want to do that. No matter how hard this was for him, no matter how nauseous he felt right now knowing that in a moment Tom would see behind the carefully erected walls he had built around himself for protection over the years, he knew that he couldn’t run away now. Tom deserved to know every detail of what lay beneath the wrapping paper, and it had already taken Will long enough to gather up the courage to share it with him.

Too long, If he was being honest with himself.

So Will shook his head and softly said, “No. Just … open it.”

With even more hesitation than before, Tom pried off the rest of the wrapping paper. Beneath it, a simple notebook with a dark brown cover appeared. It had scratches and sprinkles of mud all over it, and the edges were worn and darkened from all the times Will had thumbed them.

Tom’s fingers trailed over the faded letters on the cover.

“What is this?” he asked without opening it.

Will took a deep breath. This was it. This was the moment he had prepared himself for ever since he came back from France and saw Tom waiting for him at the train station, a little bit older, a little bit less innocent than he remembered but still with that same boyish grin that had always given Will hope for a better future. In that moment he’d promised himself that one day he would find the strength and courage to open up to Tom about what had happened to him after he–

He couldn’t even _think_ the word let alone say it, even over two years later. But he owed it to Tom to try. He owed it to him to be brave for once and take a risk and not give up halfway through. So Will swallowed once, then twice, and for the first time in his life forced the words out of his mouth.

“In your letters, you kept asking me about the war, about the year you’ve missed,” he began, the words rushing out in shaky breaths. “You wanted to know how I was doing and I just – I didn’t know how to tell you then. And to be honest, Tom, I _still_ don’t know how to talk about it all,” he admitted and hung his head, frustrated with his own inability to put his memories and feelings into words.

The frown on Tom’s face melted into a look of compassion. His hand returned to Will’s arm, unbelievably gentle. “It’s okay, Will,” he said. “I understand.”

Will felt himself smile but the gesture held no joy. “I know you do,” he said. “You stopped asking after I came home. But the past – it’s still there. Even if we don’t talk about it, it’s still there.”

“Yes,” Tom agreed softly.

His grip on the notebook tightened until the colour drained from his knuckles, and Will couldn’t help but think of the nightmares that kept them both up at night, and how Tom’s hand would sometimes reach for his in the dark, pressing their fingers against a wound that was no longer there. He thought of all the times he had left conversations abruptly just because they strayed too close to the war and the pain and grief that lay barely hidden beneath his skin. And he thought of the day Joe’s friend from the war came over for a visit for the first time, and the shock he had felt when the ominous Ellis turned out to be none other than Lieutenant Leslie.

The war might have been over for a year now but it had still followed him home – had followed _all of them_ home and stood between them like an invisible barrier, always reminding them of what had been. For the longest time Will hadn’t known how to tear it down, how to stop the war from ruining their lives even more than it already had. Words had never failed him before, not like this, but ever since Tom –

Will looked down at the notebook. It was his only chance, his only _hope_ of explaining to Tom what had happened to him, what he had done, and he had to make it count, no matter how inadequate it felt.

“This is the best I can do, Tom,” he finally whispered. It felt like an admittance of failure. “I’m sorry it’s not more.”

“Don’t,” Tom said. He dropped his fingers from Will’s arm to squeeze his hand instead. “I never needed you to talk about any of it, Will. The world knows I talk enough for the both of us.” Will couldn’t help but let out a watery chuckle and Tom smiled at him, still gentle. “I just want you to be happy. If that means you never tell me what happened after I got hurt, then that’s okay.” He looked Will in the eye and held out the notebook to him in a silent offer. “It’s okay, Will,” he repeated.

Will knew what Tom was doing. He was giving him one last out, one last chance to run away from this. The gesture, the kindness and understanding behind it, made his heart swell with gratitude even as he folded his hands over Tom’s and gently pushed the notebook back towards him.

“I want you to have it,” he said, finally sure of it. Tom would never hold the past against him, no matter what lay hidden in it. “I want you to see. I just … I don’t know how much I can explain beyond what’s in there.”

Tom smiled at him, soft and reassuring. “Alright,” he said.

Will let go of his hands and nodded, feeling lighter than he had in days, maybe even in weeks. “Alright.”

Together, they sat down side by side on Tom’s bed. Tom placed the notebook on his lap but before he opened the first page, he gave Will another look. “You really sure about this?”

Even though his stomach was only slowly beginning to unravel the knots of nervousness that had twisted it up all day, Will huffed out a shaky laugh and nudged Tom’s shoulder with his own. “Open it already.”

Tom’s hand was steady when he turned the cover over to reveal the first page. On it, Will’s name was written in careful handwriting on the upper right corner and beneath it, a place and date were marked: Bapaume, April 8th 1917.

“That’s just after –“

“– our mission, yes,” Will said. Tom let his fingertips trace the numbers. “My sister sent it to me. It arrived while we were … gone.”

Tom let that sink in for a moment before he turned the page. Will held his breath, his fingers nervously twisting around the hem of his shirt as he waited for Tom’s reaction to the drawing of him. He needn’t have worried, though, because Tom blinked once, twice, then a third time before he finally looked up and stared at Will with open-mouthed amazement. “You drew this?”

Will felt his face heat. “Yes,” he said. “It’s just a pencil sketch and I’m not really good at it but –“

“It’s _brilliant_ ,” Tom breathed. He looked back down at the sketch in wonder. “I didn’t even know …” he said, trailing off as his eyes took in all the details: the field with the flowers, the folded hands on his stomach, the helmet sitting low on his face, the slightly open mouth. “I remember this,” he said in quiet astonishment. “That’s where we used to sleep, right beneath the tree.“

His eyes shifted to the word at the bottom of the sketch.

“ _Peace_ ,” Tom whispered. His eyes met Will’s again, and it felt like he was looking right into Will’s soul. “Yeah, that’s what it felt like. The war always seemed so far away out there, didn’t it?”

All Will could do was nod in relief because Tom understood. He _understood_. It didn’t matter that Will could not put any of it into words because _Tom could_. A sketch drawn in grief over two years ago was enough for him to hear what Will couldn’t say, and it was enough for the last bit of anxiety Will had felt over this to finally uncurl and fade away.

He exchanged a grateful look with Tom and Tom smiled at him before he turned to the next page. It showed Tom’s side profile with a map of Écoust and its surrounding areas filling the background. On the bottom right corner, Will had written the words _Joseph Blake_. 

Tom glanced at him, realization dawning in his eyes. “You sketched our mission,” he said. It was a statement, not a question, and for a moment Will’s gaze went far away as he looked down at the notebook and remembered. He could feel the cold mud of the trenches again, clinging to his back and seeping into his clothes. He could smell the stench of death and despair and hear the sounds of soldiers bustling all around him as if nothing was wrong, as if Will hadn’t just lost the best thing in his life only a few days ago and the world hadn’t been left so much poorer for that loss.

He shook himself free of the memory. “I thought putting it to paper might help,” he admitted.

Tom hesitated. “Did it?”

Will shook his head. “Not really. But it gave me something to do.”

The way Tom looked at him when he said that reminded Will of the days after they first met, back when Tom was still walking on eggshells around him, not yet knowing how to make him smile and laugh with a joke or funny face. And Will supposed that was fitting, because after their mission he’d felt just as lost as he had after the Somme, maybe even more so. He’d been so lost in grief he’d forgotten how to live, how to feel anything other than numb and hollow. He’d been a shadow of his former self, a ghost existing among the doomed. Just like he’d been before – before he’d met Tom.

The next page in the notebook showed a room of bunkbeds and right in the middle, a rat. _Bastard_ was written beneath it and Tom let out an amused chuckle.

“Bastard rats,” he muttered before the smile slowly faded from his face. “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever been more scared in my whole life than when I found you buried under all that rubble.”

Will turned to him in surprise. “Yeah?” he asked even though what he meant was, _Even more than when you got stabbed?_

“Yeah,” Tom nodded. “You weren’t breathing, Will. I thought … I thought I’d lost you.”

Will hadn’t known that. He didn’t remember much about the bunker after the explosion except darkness and panic and the sound of Tom’s voice urging him to hold on and to keep going and to _jump_ , _you’re going to have to jump, just jump_! But he knew what it felt like to lose someone. He knew what it felt like to be scared for someone else’s life. Knowing that Tom had felt all that and so much more when he dragged him out of the bunker, knowing that he had thanked Tom for saving his life with angry, uncalled for words, made Will’s heart ache with regret.

“I’m sorry I snapped at you afterwards,” he said quietly, letting his head hang. “You didn’t deserve that.”

“You were scared,” Tom said kindly, always so easy to forgive. Then – “I could see your hands shaking. They’d never done that before.”

Instinctively, Will balled up his hands in his lap. Both he and Tom were painfully aware of the fact that the shakes had never really left after that fateful day. They tended to rear their ugly head whenever Will was nervous or stressed. Will had seen several doctors about the shakes, both during and after the war. One had told him the shaking might be a long-lasting effect of the bunker explosion. Another was sure it was a symptom of shellshock. The next made the head wound he’d sustained in Écoust accountable. On and on it went until Will was left with a dozen causes but no cure. The only thing all the doctors agreed on was that only time would tell if the shaking would ever stop. Will had learned to live with that, had accepted that he might never get rid of it. He ignored them as best as he could, and the people around him had learned to do the same. It was like one of those secrets everyone knew but never acknowledged, and Will was glad for it because he’d never been comfortable with others seeing the tremors in his hands, not even when it was Tom.

And Tom knew that. Will could see it right now in the way his eyes softened when he glanced down at Will’s tightly wound hands. He knew Tom wanted to reach out, wanted to help in the only way he knew how, and normally this would be the moment Will would turn away from him to hide his hands in shame.

But today was not a normal day. Today, Will took a deep breath, deliberately unclenched one of his hands and placed it on Tom’s arm.

“They’ve been shaking more often since then,” he said. “A lot more often.”

Tom stared at him, mouth hanging slightly open in surprise, before he visibly pulled himself together. His eyes never left Will’s face when he placed his own hand over Will’s and let it rest there despite – or maybe because of – the tremors he could surely feel.

“That doesn’t bother me,” he said quietly. “It never has, Will. And it never will.”

Acceptance. As simple and easy as that. An act of kindness, of support and love that Will would never demand of Tom and yet Tom gave willingly. Tom had always been like that, Will realized. From the moment they had met Tom had looked past his faults and shortcomings, happy with whatever crumbs Will was willing to share with him both literally and figuratively. All the things about him that had always put other people off only drew Tom closer, almost like a moth to a flame, until he’d wormed his way into Will’s life and heart so thoroughly that Will couldn’t imagine a life without him anymore.

“Thank you,” he whispered and Tom gave him a smile and a nod – a silent confirmation that he understood, that it wasn’t necessary for Will to say anything more for him to know what Will meant.

With one last squeeze, Tom pulled back his hand to turn the page. The paper was overflowing with cherry blossoms and in the middle of them stood Tom, a peaceful smile on his face as he reached out to touch them.

“ _Home_ ,” Tom read, mirroring the smile on the page. “I was right, wasn’t I?”

Will tilted his head to the side. “About what?”

“About it looking like it’s snowing when the cherries are in bloom.”

Will thought back to those first warm days in early spring when the world slowly awakened from its wintry slumber. Mrs. Blake’s orchard had been a perfect sea of white blossoms for a few precious days until the wind began to carry them away, one by one, and covered the ground with them until everything was white instead of green.

“Yes,” he said with a smile, remembering how the petals had clung to Tom’s hair like snowflakes.

Tom flashed him a grin. “Told you so.”

His fingers moved to the edge of the page and hesitated. The atmosphere changed. They both knew what came after the orchard, what happened because Will turned his back for a few seconds and wasn’t _there_ when he was needed the most.

Snowflakes turned to embers.

The moment Tom finally found the courage to turn the page Will dug his fingernails into his legs to keep his hands from shaking. He looked away, knowing too well what now laid bare for all the world to see: tightly clasped hands over ruined skin, trying desperately to hold onto a life that was just barely there and keep it from leaking out.

Tearstains blurring the sketch.

His grief had been so overwhelming back then that he’d hoped facing it, making it real and giving it a name would help him let go of some of it. But it hadn’t. The more lines he’d drawn, the harder it became to keep his hands steady. By the time the sketch was finished, his eyes had burned with unshed tears.

The word in the lower right-hand corner was barely legible.

_Despair._

Will didn’t know how long he’d stared at the word in silent grief. When he finally blinked, the first tears fell and after that there was no stopping them. He’d sat there in his lonely corner of the trenches, hunched over the notebook, and fell apart so utterly and completely he’d thought he would never feel whole again.

It had been the first if not the last time he’d allowed himself to grieve Tom and all the things that would never be.

Next to him, Tom – alive, and warm and wonderfully well – made the softest of sounds, a quiet _oh_. Will felt himself tense. His vision blurred and when he stared down at his hands – pale and clean and dry – all he could see and feel was blood.

“Please turn the page,” he quietly begged.

He could feel Tom’s gaze on him but could not bear to face him, not when he felt so raw. When he finally heard the sound of rustling pages he breathed out a sigh of relief. It was shaky and harsh, and a moment later he felt Tom put an arm around his shoulders and pull him close.

“I’m okay,” Tom whispered, resting his forehead against Will’s temple. “I’m okay, Will. I’m okay.”

Tom would do this whenever Will had a nightmare, too: he’d wrap himself around Will until Will’s whole world narrowed down to the feeling of his skin and the sound of his voice, and murmur promises against his skin.

_I’m alright._

_I’m here._

_I’m not going anywhere._

_I won’t leave._

_I’m okay._

Will closed his eyes and took in a shuddering breath. “I know,” he said, and he allowed himself to relax against Tom.

“Do you want to take a break?” Tom asked. His voice was hushed and soft, his breath tickling against the side of Will’s face. Will wanted to stay in this moment forever, just the two of them in Tom’s childhood bedroom while the snow gently fell outside. He wanted the pain to stop and the past gone so it couldn’t hurt them anymore.

He wanted to get rid of the notebook and never draw another sketch in his life.

But he had promised both Tom and himself that he would do this, that he would face his demons today and share them with Tom, so he shook his head. “No, let’s keep going.”

To his surprise, Tom didn’t let go of him. He simply readjusted his hold around Will’s back so their shoulders were comfortably pressed together before he looked down at the page and the unfamiliar laughing faces Will had drawn. He frowned when he saw the word Will had written beneath them: _Grief_.

“I don’t understand,” he admitted.

Will didn’t blame him. Who could understand how happiness and joy made silent grief even more unbearable if they’d never felt them grating on their souls?

“They found me after –“ He cleared his throat. “Well, _after_. I rode with them all the way to Écoust.” His voice grew quiet. “They were so … young. So full of life.”

He felt Tom’s gaze on him. “And I wasn’t.”

Will shook his head with regret. “No,” he whispered. “You weren’t.”

The next page showed a broken bridge over a canal, and a lock house behind it. Beneath it, Will had written _Jump_.

“Is that Écoust?” Tom asked him.

Will nodded. “You can’t see it in the sketch but – it was burning.” He pointed at the window on the upper floor of the lock house. “A sniper was hiding there.”

Tom glanced at him. “Did you get him?”

“In the end,” Will said with a one-shouldered shrug.

Tom’s grip on him tightened and he narrowed his eyes. “What’s that mean?”

Will reached over to turn the page for him. A _Door_ loomed on the paper, and the mere sight of it still installed the same fear and adrenaline in him that had almost paralyzed him that day.

“I shot him from the riverbank,” he told Tom, “but I couldn’t be sure he was dead.”

“So you went into the bloody house on your own?” Tom asked. He pulled back a little so he could look Will right in the eyes. “That’s fucking stupid, Will.”

The right side of Will’s mouth twitched. “I know.”

Tom gave him a tired look. “He wasn’t dead, was he? The sniper.” Will shook his head and Tom groaned. “Of course he wasn’t.”

“He shot at me when I opened the door,” Will explained. “I fell down the stairs, hit my head pretty hard. But I got him in the end.”

Tom didn’t look impressed. “How hard?” he asked. “How hard did you hit your head?”

Will hesitated. “When I came to again, it was night,” he reluctantly admitted.

Tom’s eyes widened. “ _Night?_ But that means that you lost _hours_ , Will!” he said in shock. “That’s – that’s not good. That’s not good at all.”

He lifted his hand to the back of Will’s head and buried his fingers in Will’s hair, carefully looking for a wound that was no longer there. Will let him for a moment, understanding better than most that sometimes words just weren’t enough. Then he reached for Tom’s hand with his own and gently pulled it away.

“I’m okay,” he echoed Tom’s earlier reassurance.

Tom gave him an exasperated look. “You’re an idiot is what you are. Whatever happened to being clever about it all, hm?”

Will shrugged. “I did my best.”

What he didn’t say was that he knew his best wasn’t good enough, never had been. Not for his sister and his nieces, and certainly not for Tom. The first he didn’t go home to even when he could have. The second he had failed to protect when he needed him the most.

Some of those thoughts must have shown on his face because the tension drained from Tom’s frame and his face softened.

“I know you did,” he said, twisting his hand so his fingers were interwoven with Will’s. “And you made it home. That’s all that matters.” He paused, one side of his mouth twitching. “You’re still an idiot, though.”

Will gave his hand a squeeze. “Takes one to know one.”

“Ha!” Tom said.

He turned the page, and the faces of a young woman and a baby girl stared up at them. Will felt a pang of regret when he saw them.

 _Casualties_.

His best hadn’t been good enough for them, either.

“Who are they?” Tom asked quietly, sensing the shifting mood.

Will wished he had an answer for him.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I never learned their names. The baby – she wasn’t hers. That’s all I know. I gave them all the food I had, the milk, but –“

“You don’t know if they made it,” Tom finished quietly for him.

Will let his head hang. “No.”

Tom’s gaze turned thoughtful when he looked at the sketch again. He was silent for a long moment before he turned to face Will with a look of absolute certainty.

“They did,” he said with a firm nod. “Taking care of a baby that isn’t hers in a destroyed and occupied town takes a lot of courage. They made it, Will. They did.”

He seemed so sure that Will had to swallow hard against the sudden lump in his throat. He gave Tom a faint smile. “I hope you’re right. They were kind to me.”

Tom smiled back at him. “I’m glad.”

When he turned the page, their smiles melted away like snow in spring. Will saw his own fingers wrapped around a neck, and a wave of nausea hit him so suddenly he had to look away.

_Regret._

He would never forget that soldier’s face: young and scared, desperate to stay alive.

“Oh Will,” Tom muttered.

There was nothing else to say. They had both killed people in the war – boys like them, dragged into something too big for them to understand – but never like this. Never up close, and never with their bare hands. Killing had never been that personal before Ècoust.

“I’m sorry you were forced to do that,” Tom said, his voice barely above a whisper and yet unwavering in his believe that this death, tragic and horrible as it was, had been a necessary and unavoidable evil.

Will was sorry, too. He was sorry about a lot of things. A small part of him wished he could forget that moment ever happened, that he could pretend he’d never sunken so low in his life and killed a boy barely old enough to drink. But he had, and he knew he needed to remember that. He needed to remember what it took to save sixteen hundred lives - what parts of himself he’d lost along the way, what horrors he’d committed to stay alive. 

Just for a moment, he allowed himself to lean against Tom and close his eyes, mourning all the lost souls that were butchered and damned in that war. Tom held him, a rock in a stormy sea he could always rely on, and quietly waited until Will was ready to come back to shore. He stroked Will’s shoulder, his hand gentle and careful, and Will breathed him in, grateful to be granted this despite all the unforgivable things he had done in his life.

“I wish his had been the last life I had taken,” he murmured against Tom’s shoulder before he finally found the strength to pull away. “You can go on if you want,” he said hoarsely. 

The next page was once more filled with blossoms, and a hand reaching up from the water to touch them. Will still remembered how cold it had been, and the numbness he’d felt, the exhaustion. Then came the waterfall and the panic when he’d realized what was about to happen. The river had done its best to drag him down, urging him to give in to its icy grasp. It would have been so easy to let go then, to let the river take him and put an end to his miserable life – to give in to the alluring promise of peace it whispered into his ears. 

But then the blossoms had appeared. They had come out of nowhere, making the water bloom all around him. They clung to his hands, his hair, his face, almost like a sign. As if Tom was trying to tell him something.

 _Fight_.

And that’s what Will had done. He’d fought to stay afloat, fought to reach the shore and fought to keep going. All for Tom. Only ever for Tom.

“Those are cherry blossoms,” Tom murmured, his fingers tracing the rough sketches as if they were something precious. He looked at Will. “Why were you in the water?”

“It was the only way out of Écoust,” Will said. He didn’t know how to put into words that those blossoms had saved him, and thus the Second Devons and Tom’s brother too. He didn’t know how to tell Tom that ever since that moment in the ruined orchard cherry blossoms had reminded Will of him. They’d become a symbol of hope for him, a delicate reminder that there was still something good left in the world to fight for.

It felt silly, in retrospect. Will knew Tom hadn’t put those blossoms in the river. Tom had been at an aid post at the time, fighting for his life. But hanging onto that piece of driftwood it had felt like a part of Tom was with him, gently guiding him along. Will couldn’t deny that.

“The river took me straight to Croisilles Wood.”

He nodded for Tom to turn the page. Trees as far as the eye could see filled the paper and between them, soldiers sat on the ground, staring with rapt attention at someone in the distance.

 _Peaceful_ was written beneath the sketch and Will let the memory of that one quiet moment in time when a song made him forget all the weight he was carrying for a few precious minutes wash over him.

“He was singing,” he told Tom with a soft smile as he remembered that moment in the woods. “That’s how I found the Second Devons – because he was singing. I’d never heard something so beautiful in my life.”

Tom gave him a cheeky look. “Not even my voice?”

“No, sorry,” Will lied, his smile widening against his will.

He knew what was coming, and sure enough, a moment later Tom playfully shoved him.

“Bastard,” he muttered and Will allowed himself to laugh. One day he would tell Tom how thankful he was that the first thing he got to hear every morning was his voice, that Tom’s laughter filled up the empty spaces between the pieces of himself the war hadn’t taken from him, and that his quiet humming when he worked in the orchard never failed to make Will’s whole body thrum with happiness.

For now, though, he contented himself with giving Tom’s hand a squeeze and Tom, once again somehow knowing what Will couldn’t put into words, smiled at him so sweetly Will’s heart missed a beat.

The next sketch showed a battlefield: a trench on the left, explosions on the right and soldiers running in-between. Will didn’t remember much about that moment except the desperate need to cross three-hundred yards as fast as he could to stop more soldiers from climbing over the walls and running to their pointless deaths. He had vague memories of stumbling and getting knocked over, of pain jarring his shoulder, his ribs, his hip, of his head throbbing with every step and his vision darkening at the edges, but nothing except a stray bullet or shell could have stopped him in that moment from carrying the message to Colonel Mackenzie.

“You know,” Tom said, staring down at the drawing with a contemplative look, “I didn’t believe Joe when he told me you’d run across a battlefield like a mad man to save him and his men.” He locked eyes with Will. “I think I owe him an apology.”

Will heard the silent accusation behind his words, the unspoken, _What were you thinking? Are you crazy?_

He looked at the word beneath the sketch: _Desperation_. Maybe he had been crazy in that moment but –

“There was no other way to reach the colonel in time,” he said. “The trench – it was packed with soldiers. I couldn’t get through, and they were all ready to go over the top. I couldn’t let that happen.”

“Because you promised me,” Tom sighed.

Will was silent for a beat. “Yes,” he said. There was no denying that.

Faintly, Tom shook his head. “I never wanted you to risk your life, Will,” he whispered. “Not like that.”

Will knew he could tell Tom that there hadn’t been anything left for him to risk at this point, that his life had already ended the moment Tom’s hand had gone slack beneath his fingers, when he thought that Tom was no longer breathing, no longer _living_ and brightening up the whole world around him with effortless smiles and funny stories. He knew he could tell Tom that he’d always risked his life for him, and always would no matter what. He could tell him that his life had been at risk every single day he’d been in France, long before they’d even met.

He could say all these things but instead, Will simply reached over to turn the page.

Gentle eyes gazed up at them. Just like Tom’s, a little older.

_Joe._

“It was worth it,” Will whispered.

He watched Tom bite his lip and trail his fingertips along the outline of his brother’s face. His chest filled with warmth when Tom hastily wiped his eyes and said, “I don’t know what I’d have done if he hadn’t come home.”

“I know,” Will told him softly, because he did. Tom would have stopped living just like he had, too lost in his grief to do anything more but exist. He would have lost his laugh, then his smile, and finally the light in his eyes would have dimmed until there was nothing left of the happy, carefree boy he used to be.

Will was glad it hadn’t come to that.

“Thank you,” Tom said, voice barely above a whisper. “I know I’ve said it before but – _thank you_ , Will. Thank you for bringing him home.”

Will nodded and for a moment all they did was look at each other, their hands gently pressing silent reassurances, love and comfort into familiar skin. Tom smiled at him, and when he turned the page it revealed a field stretching towards the horizon, filled with flowers. A single tree stood in the middle of it, reaching for the sky, and next to it one word was written: _Wrong_.

“It felt like I had come full circle,” Will explained quietly. “The mission started at a tree, and it ended at one. Only this time, you weren’t there. I knew your brother was safe, and so were a lot of other men, but it still didn’t feel like a victory.”

“What did it feel like?” Tom asked him.

Will shrugged and looked away. “Like I’d failed,” he admitted. “Like saving sixteen hundred men was not enough, not when you –”

He broke off.

Tom’s thumb began to rub gentle circles on the back of his hand once more. “That’s what you were always afraid of, wasn’t it?” he asked. “Of getting attached to someone only to lose them again. That’s why you didn’t want to be my friend when we first met. Because you’d lost so many of them already.”

“Yes,” Will said, closing his eyes as he remembered names and faces, smiles and tears he’d tried so hard to forget.

“But I’m still here,” Tom said, and when Will looked at him his eyes were bright and sparkling with life. “I made it, Will. I made it because you kept pressure on my wound. You didn’t fail. You _saved_ me.”

The words felt like salvation even though Will had never asked for that – had in fact always known in his heart that it had been the other way around, that Tom was the one who saved him.

He turned the page to show Tom a dark cross on a white arm patch.

“One morning, a few days after I got back to the Eighth, I didn’t wake up,” he began. “I was running a fever, and it had gone from bad to worse. I hadn’t even noticed. They sent me to an aid post and then to a field hospital.” He shook his head. “I don’t remember much about that time. I was drifting in and out of consciousness for days, and the doctors later told me they were sure I wouldn’t make it.” He felt Tom tense. “I wasn’t responding to any of the treatment and every time I seemed to get better, by next morning my fever had spiked again.”

He turned the page.

“Until your letter arrived.”

The paper pressed between the pages of the notebook was wrinkled and smudged. Will knew the words by heart now, had read them over and over again once he was well enough to do so, sometimes even in the middle of the night just to convince himself after he’d had a nightmare that his memories were wrong, that Tom was alive and recovering and soon to be shipped home instead of rotting in a field, alone and forgotten.

“A nurse read it to me during one of my rare lucid moments,” Will continued with a soft smile. “She told me I had to start fighting so I could see you again. Ten days later, I was back on my feet.”

“And back at the front,” Tom said solemnly.

Will nodded. “That, too,” he amended. “But without your letter, I would have never recovered. The doctors and nurses were sure of it. You saved my life,” he said and turned the page, revealing another crinkled letter. “You kept me going.”

More letters followed, each of them cherished and held dear. Sometimes, Will had made sketches of the stories Tom told him from home. He’d drawn Myrtle to the best of his abilities (he got the pattern of her coat awfully wrong, Tom couldn’t help but point out with a grin), the orchard, Mrs. Blake trying not to step onto the puppies. But most of all, he had drawn Tom. Between the letters, the pages were filled with his smile, his laugh, his bright eyes – all reminders that Will had something to live for, someone he needed to come back home to.

Someone he wanted to spend the rest of his life with.

When they reached the last page of the notebook, a hundred indistinctive faces mingled beyond a train window, and right in the middle of them stood Tom and waved, a grin of pure happiness and excitement stretching from cheek to cheek.

“ _Home_ ,” Tom read the word Will had underlined and scribbled in bold letters in the lower right-hand corner. He looked up at Will. “Do you really think of this as your home?” he asked in wonder, gesturing at the old house around them that his grandfather had built a long time ago.

Will shook his head. “Not this, Tom. _You_. It’s always been you.”

“Oh,” Tom breathed.

“Is that okay?” Will asked, suddenly afraid that he had said too much and revealed more than he’d meant to, more than he was ready to put into words in that moment.

Tom’s whole face softened with the beginning of a smile that made his eyes shine. He tightened his hold on Will’s hand and nodded. “It’s more than okay,” he promised before he drew Will into a hug. Warmth surrounded them as the world narrowed down to the sounds of their heartbeats and breathing, and Will felt the weight of the war slowly fade away until all that was left of his time in France were his memories of Tom.

“Thank you for sharing this with me,” Tom whispered against his neck, his lips brushing over pale skin with every other word. And then, “I’m so glad you made it home, Will.”

Will knew what he meant was _I’m glad you came back to me_ , _I’m glad you fought to stay alive for me_ , _I’m glad you’re here_ , and most importantly:

 _I’m glad you love me_.

Will smiled into his shoulder and closed his eyes. “Yeah, me too.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed the story! 
> 
> A huge thank you goes to [MagicalTear](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MagicalTear) for suggesting Bapaume as the place where Will and Tom's unit is stationed at in the beginning of the film! 
> 
> If you want to say hi, you can find me [here](https://ailendolin.tumblr.com/) on tumblr.


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